Twenty-five years
ago I had an amazing Noahide speak to my community in Cape Town, South Africa.
His name was J. David Davis. It was 1996, and he had published his first book, Finding the G-d of Noah.
Many Jews have
never heard of Noahides. Those who have often think of them as non-Jews who
observe the rule of law, accept the core of the Ten Commandments, and don’t eat
from a live animal. In fact, there are Noahides who are Torah-observant, G-d-fearing
non-Jews who reject all religious beliefs other than the laws of Noah as
defined by the Torah. One of the modern leaders of these individuals was J.
David Davis of Athens, Tennessee.
My connection to
David Davis came through an unusual source. While serving as a rabbi in Cape Town
I received a call one day from the pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church in the
neighboring suburb of Plumstead. The pastor, Herbert Suray wanted to know if I
would be willing to meet with him to answer a few “Bible questions.” I was a
bit hesitant since I felt that our meeting could potentially become a debate. I
asked Herbert why he chose to call me. He said, “My friend David Davis, who
lives in Tennessee, said that I had to speak to an Orthodox rabbi; I checked
and saw that you’re close by and Orthodox.”
I said, “Who is
David Davis?”
Herbert said, “He’s
a leader of the righteous Noahides of the United States; he lives in Athens,
Tennessee.”
Prior to my
meeting with Reverend Suray, I conducted some research on David Davis and
eventually spoke with him. I learned that he had been a successful Baptist preacher
and that his congregation had been formerly known as the Emmanuel Baptist
Church. In the late ’70s, he started to have some profound questions and doubts
about Christian theology, for which the church had no answers. He searched for
rabbis to answer his questions, but the only rabbis in proximity to Athens were
Reform. David said, “I felt sorry for those guys. I knew more about Judaism
than they did. Their religion was social justice. So I searched hard for a ‘real’
rabbi, and G-d eventually sent me Rabbi Michael Katz.”
Rabbi Katz wasn’t
exactly close by. He was the rabbi in Chattanooga, Tennessee, 60 miles away.
Like me, Rabbi Katz was (at first) a bit hesitant to become involved with a group
of non-Jews. We both had our hands full dealing with the Jews! In Rabbi Katz’s
case, David Davis was over two hours round trip from his shul. It began with
their initial meeting and was followed by learning sessions in the Katz home
with the Rabbi and Rebbitzen Toby. Then Davis prevailed upon Rabbi Katz to come
and teach at Emmanuel.
I found it
interesting that Michael Katz was a native South African who had studied at Ner
Yisrael before taking up his Tennessee pulpit. His father-in-law (Toby’s
father) was the famous Talmudic scholar, rosh yeshiva and rav, Rabbi Nachman
Bulman, zt”l. I knew Rabbi Bulman
from his days in Danville, Virginia, when he was deeply involved in NCSY.
Rabbi Katz,
seeing the enthusiasm of David Davis agreed to travel weekly to give shiurim to the Emmanuel community. As
Rabbi Katz noted, “In Chattanooga, I’d get a handful of people interested in
learning; in Athens, the place would be filled with people taking copious notes.”
As his learning progressed, David Davis decided to remove all Christian icons
from the church. The big moment came when he had the church steeple removed,
openly stating that it was a pagan symbol. Naturally, in the middle of the
Christian Bible Belt, Davis’s move away from Christian doctrine did not go
unnoticed. In fact, the Wall Street
Journal ran a front-page article entitled, “There Goes the Steeple.” Other
news agencies followed. What had been a Baptist church became the Emmanuel
Noahide Center, much to the chagrin of Baptist ministers. Reverend Davis appeared
on various television and radio shows, often accompanied by his rabbi
explaining Torah to gentiles.
Reverend Herbert
Suray and I began studying together. Eventually, he would become Cape Town’s
David Davis, and I became his Michael Katz. He would come to my shul on Shabbos,
initially taking notes during my sermons. Let’s say it was interesting. I
realized that Herbert and I needed to learn some basic facts about Shabbos if
he wanted to continue attending shul on Shabbos. Herbert told me that he was
using my Shabbos divrei Torah for his Sunday sermons. Eventually,
the church hierarchy declared Herbert a Christian heretic. It was then that the
Western Cape Noahide Community was founded under Herbert Suray’s leadership. I
was their rabbi.
During the late ’70s
and through the ’80s, David Davis established a relationship with the Rishon
L’Tzion, Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu, zt”l.
He asked if the chief rabbi could design a prayer book for Noahides and a
syllabus for the areas of Torah that they needed to properly understand in
order to better serve G-d. Rabbi Katz, Rabbi Israel Chait, Chief Rabbi Eliahu,
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, Rabbi Yoel Schwartz, and Rabbi Meir Kahana, among other
Jewish leaders, were extremely helpful and accommodating, generously giving of
their time. Davis considered Meir Kahana to be “a fearless Hebrew prophet of
the modern era.” Rabbi Kahana’s 1981 book, entitled They Must Go, was for sale on the front table at the entrance of
the Emmanuel Center.
In 1997 before
Rosh Hashanah, Herbert Suray asked if he could purchase a seat in my shul. I
said that the shul would be happy to “comp” him a seat. What I didn’t expect
was to see Herbert show up on Rosh Hashanah wearing a kittel, a white velvet
kippah, and a large wool tallis. In those days, most of my High Holiday crowd
didn’t own either a kittel or a large woolen tallis. Armed with his ArtScroll machzor, Herbert went to his assigned
seat. Half an hour passed, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed that
Herbert looked upset. I caught his eye and motioned for him to meet me in the
hallway. He said, “Rabbi, I’m so sorry. I know that you tried to find me a good
seat, but I can’t pray properly because the men around me are talking.”
Directly facing my seat beside the aron kodesh,
there was what I’ll call the “serious daveners” group. I squeezed in an
extra chair. Herbert pulled his tallis over his head and began praying in
earnest. He blended in seamlessly.
When it came time
to fall Korim, Herbert completely
prostrated himself on the floor – after which my Lithuanian shammos (who grew up during terrible
pogroms) could not hold himself back from talking during Mussaf. He ran up to
me and said, in his heavy accent, “Rebbe, I’ve seen it all:
a galach (non-Jewish priest) who falls Korim in
shul on the Yamim Nora’im. Moshiach is ‘en de vay!’”
During this
period, David Davis had started a campaign to buy a Sefer Torah for his
community. Rabbi Katz wasn’t too pleased. He was concerned about a Sefer Torah
being owned by non-Jews. Then the big shock came: Rabbi Katz was leaving his
shul in Chattanooga. Eventually, he and his family moved to Georgia, but he
continued to commute (now 2.5 hours one way) to Emmanuel in Athens. Davis’s
community was comprised of hardworking people many of whom scrimped to get by
each month. Nevertheless, in order to contribute to obtaining their Sefer Torah,
many had given up months of eating out or buying new clothes. Some bought less
meat in order to donate to the Noahide Torah. After a campaign lasting 19
months, the center achieved its fundraising goal and was excitedly awaiting the
arrival of their Torah scroll, which at the time cost a whopping $29,000. Davis
wanted only the “best” Torah for Emmanuel.
The following
Saturday morning Davis got up to deliver his sermon. He thanked his community
for their truly righteous sacrifice for the honor of possessing a Torah. He
then said with tears in his eyes, “My beloved and faithful congregants, as much
as you want a Torah scroll, so do I. With your permission, I want to know if
you will allow me to sell our new – never used – Torah in order to help out
some of our rabbis who are struggling to make ends meet. They have devoted
themselves to teaching us intensively, and they are continuing to sacrifice on
our behalf. I pondered this long and hard and I realized that no matter how
holy an actual Torah scroll is, it is an inanimate object. The rabbi, the
teacher of Torah, is more important to us than the scroll itself, because
without our rabbis we would know nothing about the profound and hidden messages
which they reveal to us through their teachings. Learning Torah allows us to
better understand how to serve our Creator. I would like us to be able to learn
and absorb all that we can by retaining our devoted rabbis as long as we can by
easing their financial burdens.”
The Emmanuel
congregation voted unanimously to sell their Torah to support their teachers of
Torah. As I write this, tears come to my eyes. J. David and his community were
truly among the chasedei umos ha’olam
(righteous gentiles).
In 1999, I met
Rabbi Katz in his North Miami Beach home. He showed me his lovely dining room
and living room furniture, handcrafted by his grateful Emmanuel students as a
farewell gift upon his family’s departure from Tennessee. The beautiful
furniture was a practical and lasting gift from his students given with their
“love and admiration for their rabbi.”
In a time when so
many people over-think and complicate even the simplest things, I remember
fondly how so many uncomplicated, honest, soul-searching Noahides just wanted
to be good and do good and walk humbly in the ways of G-d and His Torah. As
David Davis once said, “I just want to be holding onto my Rabbi’s tzitzis when the Messiah arrives,”
Rabbi Dr. Ivan Lerner, a former day school principal, is Rabbi Emeritus of the Claremont Cape Town , South Africa
